Jack Kirby Collector celebrates the life and career of the "King" of comics through interviews with Kirby and his contemporaries, feature articles,
and rare & unseen Kirby artwork. Now in tabloid format, the magazine showcases
Kirby's art at even larger size.

Will Eisner Speaks!

In the late Thirties, Jack was looking for new editors as a freelance
artist. In 1936, he started with the Lincoln News Syndicate, working
on his first comic strips. Two years later, a more experienced Kirby
was employed by Will Eisner & Jerry Iger's Art Syndication Company
in New York. There, he produced three strips: Diary of Doctor Hayward,
Wilton of the West, and Count of Monte Cristo (finished by Lou Fine),
published in the first issues of Fiction House's Jumbo Comics in
1939, and constituting his first comic book work. Jack left the studio
the same year, going from Martin Goodman's Red Circle Company to
Fox Features, where he met his long-time collaborator Joe Simon.
Little was written about Jack's time in the studio apart from an
interview conducted by Will Eisner himself for The Spirit Magazine
in the Eighties. This interview with the Spirit's father was conducted
on 25 January 1997 in Angoulême during the most important French
comic convention. I'd like to thank Will Eisner for his time and
his kindness. Special thanks also to Gerard Jean (Magazines de France)
for the recording.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: In 1938, you created the Art Syndication
Company with Jerry Iger. What was the purpose of this syndicate?

WILL EISNER: It was a company that I began with Jerry Iger,
who was formally the editor of Wow Magazine. Wow Magazine was the first
magazine that I did work for. I was a young freelance cartoonist. The
magazine went bankrupt. It went out after two or three issues. So,
I was out of work. I was very poor because it was still the Great Depression.
Jerry Iger was broke; he was out of work, out of a job. But I saw something
that was very obvious: You didn't have to be a genius to see that they
were looking for new stories, original stories. Up until that time,
the magazines that were beginning were using newspaper strips, which
they pasted together. Then I said to Jerry Iger, "Something is
happening here. Pretty soon, there won't be enough strips, and they
will need original material; and I think we can do it." So I said, "Let's
make a company."

We had lunch together in a little restaurant. He said, "No, I
don't want to do that. Besides, we don't have enough money to start." So
I said I would put up the money. It was my money: $15, which paid the
rent for three months for a little office, a very tiny office. There
was room enough for one little drawing board and a little desk, and
that's all. That was why my name was first on the company: It was "Eisner & Iger." I
was the financial man, you know! (laughter) So, I did all the drawings.

TJKC: How did you meet Jack Kirby at that time?

WILL: Within a few months, the company was successful. It was
growing very fast, and we moved to a larger office on Madison Avenue
and 40th Street. But you see, in that office we pretended that we had
five artists, but actually it was all me! (laughter) I did five different
stories with different names: Willis Rensie, W. Morgan Thomas, Spencer
Steel, names like that. Iger was a salesman. He was not a good cartoonist,
but he could do lettering, so he did lettering for me. He would be
a salesman, he would go and call on the publishers, and he would say, "We
have five artists. These are the names..." (laughter) Then we
got so much business that we moved to another office, and I began to
hire old friends. I went to school with Bob Kane [at DeWitt Clinton
High School], so I asked him to come work for me. He was looking for
work. And then we began to hire people. Jack Kirby came in one day
with a portfolio; he was looking for work. So we hired him and he was
good. That's how he came.

TJKC: What other artists were working there, along with Iger,
Kane, Kirby, Lou Fine and you?

WILL: Bob Powell. But these names you remember, they were different
names! Bob Powell's real name was Stanislav Pavlowsky. (laughter) Jack
Kirby's name was Jacob Kurtzberg. Bob Kane's was Bob Kahn. I was the
only one that kept my own name! (laughter)

TJKC: Your production was to be sold to Editors Press Service,
publisher of the British magazine Wag. Was your work, along with Jack's
work, published then or was it first released in Jumbo Comics for Fiction
House?

WILL: No, the first releases were to magazines that were starting
out. The company was what's called a "packager." It's where
you put everything together and deliver to the publishers what they
call "camera-ready" and they would print it. The publishers
who were coming into the business then had no experience with comics.
They were all pulp magazine publishers and pulp magazines were dying.
They were looking for new material. So, we were not publishers, but
we were producers.

First we began with Editors Press and there were a few other magazines.
And then we went to Fiction House which then published Jumbo Comics
and Jungle Comics.

TJKC: Do you have any anecdotes to share about Jack at work
then?

WILL: Jack was a little fellow. He thought he was John Garfield,
the actor! (laughter) Very tough, very tough. Everything you see here
[Will points to the cover of The Jack Kirby Collector #13] was inside
him. But he was a very little fellow; a very good fellow, but very
tough. When we moved to a new office in a nice office building, we
had a towel service for the artists to wash their hands, and we would
buy a towel for each of the artists so they could wash up. The people
who supplied the towels, however, were mafia! (laughter) They were
charging more and more money, so my partner Iger said, "Look,
let's find another towel service [that's] cheaper," because at
that time we had ten to fifteen artists and it was beginning to cost
money. So I called them and said, "Look, we would like to find
another towel service." So I get a visit from their salesman.
(laughter) He had a white tie, a black hat, a broken nose, y'know?
Scarface! (laughter) And he came in and said, "Are you really
not happy with the service?" I said, "Well, we want to find
another..." He said, "There is nobody else that can service
this building." (laughter)

We were beginning to talk loud, and from the other room, in comes
Jack Kirby. He says to me, "Will, is he giving you a problem?
I will beat him up." (laughter) This is little Jack Kirby, and
this big guy! (laughter) I said, "Jack, go inside!" Jack
says, "No, no." He says to the fellow, "Look, we don't
have to take your towels! We can take other people's!" The guy
looked at me and said, "Who is he?" And I said, "He's
my chief artist. Don't get him angry, because..." (laughter) So
this fellow said, "Look, we want to do this friendly. We don't
want to have any trouble." And Jack said, "If he comes to
see you again, call me and I'll beat him up!" (laughter)

TJKC: Did the artists work in collaboration on the same strips
in the studio ? Did you ever work on Jack's pencils, or Jack on yours?

WILL: No, the way we worked in Eisner & Iger was that I
would design a story in the very beginning, maybe sometimes in blue
pencil, and then Jack would take it and do it, or Bob Powell would
take it and do it. For example, I designed the character Sheena, Queen
of the Jungle. So, I made the first drawing. Sometimes I would do the
cover first, and then give it to somebody and say, "Here, you
do it." That how we worked.

TJKC: Can you tell me what you did after the studio?

WILL: In 1938, the newspaper syndicate came to realize the
importance of comic books. They wanted me to make a comic book for
newspapers. At that time, it was a big risk! They gave me an adult
audience and I wanted to write better things than super-heroes. Comic
books were a ghetto. I sold my part of the enterprise to my associate
and then began The Spirit. They wanted an heroic character, a costumed
character. They asked me if he'd have a costume. And I put a mask on
him and said, "Yes, he has a costume!"

TJKC: You met Jack again in the eighties [1982] for an interview
in Spirit Magazine #39. Did you meet Jack after that?

WILL: After that, I would see him in places like San Diego.
He moved to California. In America, up until a few years ago, artists
didn't see each other very often, because they lived in different places.
America is a very big place, and we didn't see each other. So I would
see him when I got to San Diego; we would talk and say hello.

There is another thing I can tell you. I did a book called The Dreamer
[Kitchen Sink, 1986], in which I showed Jack Kirby, and Jack said to
somebody, "I didn't think Will liked me that much!" (laughter)
He always called me "boss." (laughter) I said, "Jack,
we're old men now, you don't have to call me boss anymore." "No," he
said, "you're still my boss." (laughter)